Catch Me On The Ground
by Nagia
Summary: So Misao's stuck in Tokyo with a sword-slinging psychic, his crazy chicken-headed best friend, and his surprisingly sane girlfriend... oh. And a foxy missing med student that Takeda Kanryuu happens to want back. AU BASED ON SCIFI REDESIGNS. Aoshi/Misao, Kenshin/Kaoru, Sano/Megumi
1. Chapter 1

**Catch Me On The Ground**

_one_

* * *

><p>She said, "Lately, falling's been easy on me<br>A lot like breathing used to be,  
>And call me crazy, but I was thinking<br>Maybe you'd be waiting on the ground  
>To come and catch me."<br>—Matt Nathanson, "Wings"

* * *

><p>Kyoto, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

Makimachi Misao folded the cooling cape over her shoulders, triangular cloth hopefully helping the heat slide off. Kyoto in the summer could be miserable; she'd never understood how the geiko could stand to go out in the traditional Heian era clothes.

She was just approaching the main door of the Aoi-ya, absently loading her throwing knives into her sheathbelt, when Okina's voice trickled into her ears. She couldn't make out his words, but she had a feeling she knew what they were anyway. Looked like her visit to a place where she could read the underground newslinks would have to wait.

She tiptoed up to his office, her braid swinging along her back as she did. The tip of her hair was tapping a beat against her knees as she went up the stairs. The syntho-wood of the door was cool underneath her fingers, almost cold.

Yep, he was in his office.

"Jiya?"

She could hardly see him for the holo-data in front of him. He had to have at least fifteen different infovids open, and a text-com, and what from the back looked like… she squinted, but the holo projector built into his desk suddenly clicked off.

"Misao-chan!" That ridiculous little bow in his beard bobbed as he spoke. "Come here, come here! Sit down!"

Warily, she approached. One of the chairs hovering in front of his desk whirred away, leaving only the blue one. She zipped forward and took a seat.

"You've been begging me to give you a mission lately," he began. His expression told her exactly what he thought of her wanting missions. "I recently received a reply from somebody."

He pressed a button. The holo-data all reappeared. He quickly closed out of a view that she wasn't sure she wanted to identify, rearranging his tabs until all she could see was a picture of a man with hair spikier than an iron rooster's crest and a text-com.

She skimmed the text-com, then re-read it. Something about an offer, and that he wouldn't mind taking the job, since he was scheduled for a tournament on C1-7 around that time. It was all phrased casually. Carefully so.

"You want me to find this gladiator?"

Okina nodded. "You'll be our middle man. You'll be the one to find him and take the cargo from him."

"Cool!" She grinned, found herself doing a little mental calculation and grinned wider. "Does that mean I get to take the car?"

Okina blanched. The little bow in his moustache seemed to droop.

"No, no, wait! If it's small, I can take the speeder, right?"

"If all goes well, you'll be piloting a ship back home."

"You're getting a ship?" It came out as a shriek. "I'll be piloting it?"

"The ship isn't the only important thing! The cargo is more important than the ship." He smiled at her, handed her a list hand-written onto some clear flimsy. "Items are listed in order of importance."

"Jiya," she said, shock making her nearly drop the piece of flimsy, "are you having things smuggled on-planet?"

He didn't say anything, but his expression told her. It also told her to keep quiet about that. You didn't verbally admit to something like that, even with someone you trusted. Never knew when the government might drag you into the night and put a reader in front of your eyes. Fortunately, evidence from readers was always fiddly and usually didn't show up in court. Kind of like hear-say, actually.

"I'll be good," she promised.

"Be safe and be fast." He paused. "And don't play nice."

"Love you too, Jiya." With a wink and a wave, she stood from the chair.

Outside, the sun had never felt brighter, and the heat had never been better.

* * *

><p>The café was one of those strange seedy half-places. It was just a few consoles on the floor with women dressed like video game characters bringing you Voltage! served in tall glasses, or maybe coffee, if you asked for it instead.<p>

Misao didn't ask for anything. She just slid a few wrinkled bills over the counter, took the passcard they handed her, and went to the console a girl dressed like Samus Aran pointed her to. She swiped the passcard through the console, began tapping immediately at the holographic keyboard.

The government ran the newspapers, of course. It even ran most of the major news blogs. But there were a few independent ones.

She logged into her favorite and began scrolling through. There really wasn't all that much going on in her usual sections of the site. The "just in" box, however, had an interesting link.

LOOK OUT WORLD, TAKEDA HAS NINJAS!

Other links relating to Takeda Kanryuu 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 More

According to inside sources, Takeda Kanryuu, infamous crime lord, has hired a new mercenary group as his heads of security. While their identity remains secret, the inside source is confident that they are related to Kyoto's own Oniwabanshuu.

"They wear black and purple uniforms," says the source, who would prefer to remain anonymous. "One of them wears a mask that's just horns. The rest aren't human."

What happened to the last guards? Nobody's sure, but there are rumors that the previous captain of Takeda's guard ended up in pieces in the common room of a Yoshiwara teahouse.

"They're all real scary guys," says the source.

Scarier, it seems, than the previous band.

A mask that was just horns? She remembered one of those. It had been a white duraplas visor. There had been no facial features. Shiny and completely opaque, though he somehow still saw through it. Hannya could even see in the dark, she remembered.

He had raised her. And if Hannya and a bunch of "not humans" were working together, then that could only mean the missing Oniwabanshuu. The ones who had followed Aoshi-sama that rainy night, who had left Kyoto not even ten years before.

And that meant Aoshi was among them. The article didn't mention him, though. Maybe the source had never seen him?

She gnawed her lip, dug another wrinkled bill out of her pocket, and raised her hand. A girl who could have been Chun Li except for the gas mask and a faux machine gun appeared promptly at her elbow.

"A Caf-Pow and a yatsuhashi," she murmured.

Zombie Apocalypse!Chun Li plucked the bill out of her fingers and vanished into a screened area. After a few moments, she returned with a yatsuhashi wrapped in light wax paper and a tall glass of Caf-Pow.

Misao accepted the treats, gnawing on the koto-shaped sweet while she clicked more and more links relating to Takeda Kanryuu. Every short article painted him as a bigger dirtbag than before. They'd linked the death of a charity doctor to him, and the disappearance of a young med student, and the disappearances of several small children. One of the links was nothing but unsubstantiated rumor, claiming that he was working with the Yakuza to make a new kind of opiate available to junkies.

It was all crazy and she was sure some of it was a lie. But the horned mask, the blue and purple uniforms, the lack of humans—some of it fit.

She'd just have to find out the truth when she went to Tokyo, she supposed.

* * *

><p>The bi-operational speeder was—hands-down, no contest whatsoever—her favorite possession. She'd worked part-time as a runner from the time she was twelve to the time she was fourteen to earn the money. If she'd proven that she could use it right, Okina probably would have bought it for her.<p>

But it was hers. She had earned it. She took obsessive care of it.

Her fingers tapped a certain sequence on the security keys. The armor retracted until it was just a regular two-wheeled hover speeder, its body slightly longer than her own. The armor didn't retreat all the way; some of the hardened durasteel remained near the seat. It would hopefully minimize any damage to her should she go spinning, but she had yet to find out from experience.

She let her smile vanish under her helmet, mounted the speeder, slid in the ignition-tab. The speeder hummed to life, electric blue light spinning around the wheels. The holo display in her helmet flickered into existence.

She flicked her wrist. The engine purred. The null-gravs made hrmmmmv sounds when she flipped the hover switch and kicked off from the ground. She clenched her grip on the throttle, laughing as the speeder shot forward, into traffic. She leaned into the turn, came to an abrupt stop behind a green liftcar.

The hovertraffic all honked. Kids on speeders were notorious amongst Kyoto-natives for being reckless and crazy, often hopped up on something—and if they weren't, they were completely fearless daredevils. Nobody liked a small person on a speeder.

She leaned forward over the speeder's body, revved it again, and shifted into a higher gear at the same moment the light they were all waiting for turned green. Traffic was the one thing in Kyoto that showed a non-traditional face in public. Soon enough, every vehicle in the stream was jostling for a better position. People would just as soon slit throats as signal if they wanted to get into the turning lane.

The outbound J-11, naturally, was just as crazy.

* * *

><p>Tokyo, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

Finally, reports that did more than make him wonder why he was still in Tokyo. Before his thoughts could go any farther, he crushed the anticipation, the concern, the relief beneath the discipline Okina had taught him.

Then he deleted the encrypted message from his datareader. And deleted the encryption key he'd written for it. In their place, he wrote a quick auto-search function and set it to flag his inbox on a simple if/then conditional.

That done, he resumed his inspection of the new resident wing. No part of the house was under construction — it had all been finished years ago, before he'd even received word from Takeda — but 'structurally complete' did not necessarily mean 'ready for habitation.' Particularly when the intended inhabitant would be a prisoner in this part of the home.

That the wing was nearly a blur of core-style rooms spoke both to Kanryuu's tastes and his own state of mind. Aoshi forced himself to stop moving, to survey his surroundings with both the practiced eye of an omitsu and the desperation of a captive.

Despite the core planet's apparent love of gleaming heavy wood and plush, vibrant upholstery, he spied very little heavy furniture near the windows. Anything heavy enough to break a glass window was either too heavy for a woman of Takani's size to lift or was perma-bolted to the floor.

He dug his boots into the floor, testing the carpeting. Soft, yielding. She wouldn't think to do herself any injury by throwing herself off something.

At long last, he stopped in the intended bedroom. The mattress was strapped down, all furniture perma-bolted to the floor. There was even a kinetic barrier blocking the window. Takeda had spared no expense in refurbishing this prison.

But the generator's buzzing was off-pitch. He tilted his head to listen closely, adjusting his glasses out of habit. Another man might have smirked or nodded in satisfaction.

Aoshi simply turned on his heel and walked away.

* * *

><p>Hannya was waiting for him at the entrance to the Oniwabanshuu suite. The other onmitsu wasn't immediately visible, but the holoprojector thrimmed, and the illusion of an empty corner ceased to be.<p>

Hannya's expressionless duraplas non-face looked chilly. There was a faint sheen in the light, but Hannya's mask almost always gleamed.

"Kanryuu's preparations are satisfactory?"

"To hold Takani," he replied. "Next item?"

"Critical discussion of our employer's home security." To one who had not known him for most of both their lives, his voice would have been toneless. Aoshi detected a faint note of amusement.

"Electronic and artificial security systems are tolerable." He'd had a look at both. They didn't match their blueprints at all, and didn't quite match the statement Takeda had given city authorities.

All to the good, in his opinion. Takeda was filth, but at least he wasn't stupid filth. He just apparently hated everyone and everything with the exception of money and the man who visited from Beijing every so often.

"And the support?" Hannya's tone wasn't enough of a question to be genuine. The other onmitsu apparently knew what he was going to say, or thought he did.

"Needs work," he said, tone going sour.

Shikijou's presence was sudden, even for him. One moment, the sharp-toothed man wasn't there; the next, he was. It was a better entrance than even Hannya usually made.

"They're cannon fodder," Shikijou said.

And cannon fodder meant, they all knew, that Shikijou thought they would taste better than they would fight. Shikijou's family had been unscrupulous carnivores. Those teeth occasionally reminded him that Shikijou wasn't always particularly discerning.

He was good at his job and one of the few men Aoshi would truly call a friend, but he was a happy carnivore on a moon full of vegetarians.

"You're suggesting we leave them as found?" Aoshi raised an eyebrow.

"Exactly as found. Anything that can beat two security systems can take down any number of cheap guards." Shikijou's teeth made a clicking sound as he grinned.

Aoshi didn't look. Sometimes Shikijou's lower lip got caught on one of the upper teeth and then tore. "Hannya?"

"Fair point," Hannya allowed.

Aoshi rubbed at his glasses, pushing them along the bridge of his nose. "Double the numbers on the main grounds. I want standard shift rotations."

He could hear fabric moving as Shikijou stretched. And without needing to see it, he could hear the smile in the manshark's voice. "Just because he's dirt doesn't mean we don't do it right."

* * *

><p>Takeda Kanryuu kept a private office in the style used on the core planet. He apparently liked to sit in a central-style chair while he read reports on bits of flimsy and listened absently to another man's voice on holovid, destroying and creating businesses with the occasional flick of his stylus.<p>

Aoshi supposed he could understand. There was a certain power in appearance. The swiftest knife to any intelligent man's hand was his enemy's imagination. Powerful, subtle images could be used to shape opinion, and through opinion, shape reality.

He went in through the window, rather than the door. The window hissed shut behind him, clicked locked.

Takeda didn't look up from his flimsies. He circled something on one of them.

"I'm doubling your ground floor security."

He raised an eyebrow. "And I'm paying for that, why…?"

"Because the expense is worth the peace of mind." To a civilian, anyway. Aoshi had seen enough that his own peace of mind would never come so cheaply.

To onmitsu, peace of mind meant you slept with your back in a corner, one eye open, and your weapon in your hand.

"Your peace or mine?"

"Yours."

"You think I'll be under attack?"

"It's easier to ask which of your colleagues doesn't hate you. I'm certain."

The filth masquerading as a businessman looked up, then. He searched Aoshi's face for something. Aoshi hoped his non-expression didn't give it to him, but apparently Takeda was satisfied. The sudden delighted—if still ironic—clapping made it clear.

"Splendid! It's not paranoia if they're out to get me, is it, now?"

Aoshi said nothing.

"And how's my dear, lovely Takani-san doing?"

If Takeda had an eye for the female form, Aoshi would grind his glasses into both of his own. He didn't so much as twitch. "Her new quarters are ready. Reduce her available space if she refuses. She'll break soon enough."

He threw back his head and laughed. "Aoshi, Aoshi, Aoshi. You've really got a nasty mind, you know that? It's like a poisoned trap."

Aosi said nothing. So long as Takeda's opinions did not affect his men, Aoshi didn't care what he thought.

"I'm sure the opportunity to do charity work would make her feel better," the businessman murmured, setting a stack of flimsies aside.

He crossed the room silently. When Takeda gave no indication that he cared, he left through the door.


	2. Chapter 2

She said, "Lately, falling's been easy on me  
>A lot like breathing used to be,<br>And call me crazy, but I was thinking  
>Maybe you'd be waiting on the ground<br>To come and catch me."  
>—Matt Nathanson, "Wings"<p>

* * *

><p>The sun beat down hard on the north-bound J-11. The heat was furious, was tangible, was more than just a shimmer in the air, it was a hammer against her back. All around her, lifts and speeders were streaming past, their engines and null-gravs making noises like hrrrv and grrm. She heard a crystospanner give out with a loud, shrieking scree-thunk scree-thunk scree-thunk.<p>

It was second nature to avoid the dizzily kicking speeder and its desperate, panicking rider. Misao zipped around a liftcar and revved her engine to throw a rear glow. She pulled vertical while still going forward, then slammed the rear of the speeder back down. The blue lights around her rear tire glowed very nearly bright enough to blind. Showy, but it got her point across: even a large liftcar going that slow on the J-11 invariably ended up with tire tracks on its hood.

The liftcar behind her honked. Apparently, the driver didn't appreciate the warning.

Well, whatever. When a speedrider hopped up on god-knew-what ramped his speeder onto their liftcar, it wouldn't be her fault.

The J-11 was crazy. She wondered if Okina knew how crazily people drove. Apparently the government didn't care so long as nobody did too much damage to its property. And the unfriendlies mostly kept away from the main roads; it had taken them years, but they'd finally figured out that liftcars would simply flatten them.

She remembered when she'd been stuck taking the train. Those days had been when Okina first made absolutely certain that she could use her knives as katars. He'd been the one to pick up her hand-to-hand training, after Aoshi-sama and Hannya had left.

Thinking about it, he was right about one thing. The trains were pretty dangerous.

Ahead of her, somebody's null-gravs went sideways with a harsh grrthoktoktoktok and then a long, trailing whine. It was like the buzzing of a bee, only it was worse. It was louder, more nasal, higher-pitched. And it was lasting longer.

: unusual levels of null-grav radiation present ahead five meters, her helm told her.

"Understood. Hazard rating?'

: presently at zero.

That was good. "Thanks, Itachi. Alert me when hazard rating hits point five?"

: affirmative.

She zipped around the sinking speeder, but never got an alert.

Three hours later, Misao pulled into a way-station. The metal of the speeder seemed even hotter than usual. She was halfway there and both she and the speeder were thirsty.

The way-station's door slid open. A motion detector chimed. The inside was cooler than outside, but only barely. Dimly lit, too. Smelled stuffy with a faint tang of coolant fluid and the dry sweetness of burnt cooler coils. The half-dead air conditioner was making thok-thok-thok sounds in an attempt to cool the tiny building.

In the back room, she could distantly hear a newscaster droning on and on about the latest pointless thing that had happened in this nowheresville roughly halfway between Kyoto and Tokyo.

Somebody was snoring.

She grinned, walked to the refrigerated aisle. Bottle upon bottle of water glowed underneath the lights. Most of it was green, but she could see a few bottles of blue.

Crysto-Hydrate, they called it. The null-gravs were powered by the crystospanner, which used a hell of a lot of specially filtered water to gradually siphon lift energy from the lift crystal. What all that boiled down to? Speeders got thirsty. Fast. Especially in summer.

She grabbed two bottles of her preferred brand and a bottle of real water for herself.

By the time whoever was snoring in the back room noticed that he had a customer, she was sitting on the counter, drinking her water and watching the closed-circuit monitor on the wall behind the counter. She wasn't the only customer in the store; two men drifted down the shelves and aisles. One looked like a thug, with hair that swept out, like a bird's wing. The other looked like a cop. A very, very young cop.

"Hey! That's not daytime TV," the cashier snapped, face twisted into an expression that said she was in for it.

"Hot out there," she said without looking away from the monitor.

He scowled but rang up the three bottles of water on his ancient register. "Sixteen two."

She slid a few wrinkled bills and a pair of coins onto the counter. She hopped down, reveling in the feeling of the cool floor under feet.

Outside, her speeder sat in the shade, awaiting more crysto-hydrate. The metal of its cover was hot to the touch. She could have fried tempura on it.

* * *

><p>Even close to Tokyo, the J-11 was still crazy. She watched a pair of speeders ramp onto a liftcar. The liftcar's horn blared, but the speeders were gone in a flash. Smart of them. This close to a city, that kind of nonsense could get you arrested.<p>

Once actually approaching Tokyo, on the inbound, things got a lot hairier. Traffic slowed abruptly. There was some sort of check point controlling the inbound J-11. The line of cars and speeders was long. Longer than she'd imagined it could be.

Misao slowed to a stop, settling into a group of speedriders. One of them looked over her way, nodded.

She tilted her head and sighed. "How long's the wait going to be?"

"Hours," one of them replied. The voice was female, though the speeder's coloring and style weren't.

One of the other speedriders pressed a button on his helmet. The visor hissed away, revealing a face that startled her.

He was older than she was. Older than Aoshi-sama, for that matter. There was stubble on his chin. His eyes were a lethal gold.

Itachi chimed an alert to her visor. : vehicle registration ping detected. registration privacy override delta-delta-delta-zero-three. auto-acknowledge function engaged.

"What are you doing out of Kyoto, Itachi-musume?"

And now he was raising an eyebrow disdainfully at her. There was something cold in his expression, though, as if he was evaluating whether she was a threat or not.

"Family obligation. And don't call me that!"

His eyes never left her, still measuring. Still detached. A moment passed and his glance flicked away, disinterested.

"Just don't cause trouble for the rest of us."

That drew a disgruntled huff from her. She turned her head away from him, deliberately looking at the datascreen that covered half the external wall of the entry checkpoint. Characters scrolled along it almost too fast for her to read, family names, vehicle registration numbers, and reminders of the local laws that differed from the rest of Japan.

Time passed, slow as the sweat that rolled down the back of her neck. She gathered her braid in one hand, smoothed her armored fingers over it. Having her hair tied back kept her a little cooler, but she had a feeling not even that would work for long periods spent in direct sunlight.

If the uniform weren't so handy at night, she would have been cursing its color.

* * *

><p>Tokyo, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

Tokyo was huge. Kyoto had a strong focus on traditional architecture: sweeping roofs, graceful bridges, bright colors. Tokyo was modern. Tokyo looked like the holovids she'd seen of the central planet. Tall towers, durasteel and plascrete buildings, ugly dark roads.

She pulled over, close to the sidewalk, and pulled out her ancient data reader. She flipped it open, scrolling through data until she could read a text-com Okina had just sent. It contained a better photograph of Sagara Sanosuke and a list of places to look for him.

She didn't want to go haring off after him right now. She wanted to find someplace to stay.

It wasn't like she had much of a choice, she thought. At the very least, she could get a start. It would help.

Time to start in the teahouses and the bars near Yoshiwara. If she could find Yoshiwara.

The streets were a maze. She worried that she was lost, before the helm started chiming in directions.

: left ahead five meters

She took the left and then all the turns it recommended.

It wasn't hard to figure out when she'd entered the right district. When she parked the speeder and powered its systems down, she dug out her screwdriver and pulled a few panels apart. Reached deep into its wirings and workings until at last she pulled out a silver canister. Inside the canister was a blue lift crystal.

She powered its systems back on, input the armor command, and wired the auto-def to blow if someone entered an incorrect passcode more than twice.

The bar was dimly lit inside. Blue smoke hung in a haze around the light fixtures, fogged up some of the booths.

Misao crossed to the bar, leaned up against it with purpose. She pulled a crisp bill out of her glove, waved it right under her own nose, then vanished it again.

The bartender gave her a wary look.

She pushed her data reader forward. "I'm looking for this guy," she said, tone bright, deliberately so.

The bartender looked down, looked back up at her, then looked at her glove.

She smiled brightly. "Where does he usually hang?"

* * *

><p>Tokyo, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

Aoshi was four steps from the monitor room when the intercom buzzed. No one said his name over the loudspeaker, but the lack of any words after the ear-gratingly high pitched noise was cue enough.

He turned on his heel and ghosted through the halls, for once bothering with the door to Takeda's study.

The door clicked shut behind him. Quite loudly; any Oniwabanshuu would have turned immediately toward the sound. But Takeda was in no state to pay attention to such minor details.

The man was currently in the midst of heaving everything off his desk and stomping on it. Aoshi took note of the glint in the businessman's eyes and took care to stay even further out of Takeda's potential reach.

When he thought he stood a chance of being heard, he asked, "Wu Hei Shin again?"

"If only my idiot Chinese partner were my only problem!"

Aoshi raised an eyebrow.

"You're the one who thought he knew how to break her. And you were wrong! I ought to fire you."

So do, Aoshi didn't say. "I guessed, based on her background and disposition."

"Well, you guessed wrong. Guess again, and guess right this time."

He made no reply.

From the monologue that followed, he hadn't really been expected to. Takeda spoke to him slowly, as if trying to explain a difficult concept to a small child. "Shinomori, if my lead medical nanotechnologist won't work on my primary source of income, then I don't make any money. And if I don't make any money, you don't get paid."

As if the money was what mattered to him, and not the contract. Technically, he supposed the money should have mattered. No clan of competent ninja was ever poor, but the market had been collapsing ever since the Bakumatsu. Very nearly the only work left was corporate espionage - for which his team was grossly unsuited.

"What is her primary objection?"

"The same as always: that I'm asking her to use her medical training to kill people." Takeda finally stopped attempting to grind paper into dust and cast him a long look. "If the nano-opiate isn't prepared correctly, then it can result in death."

"So tell her to prepare it correctly."

That earned him a very brief startled look, though Takeda quickly smoothed it away into his usual expression. "The problem is on the user's end. No matter what she does, the user has to prepare it just right. Apparently that weighs down on her conscience."

"Then you won't break her from a logical angle. You're going to have to rely on punishment and fear."

Another moment of startled silence. "You're so lenient with your men, I always thought you might have some sort of moral objection. You don't care that you're trying to persuade a doctor to create a deadly drug?"

"My job is to ensure the safety of your person and property and do my best to assist your business operations. So long as you don't interfere with my men, I don't care what you do or what the consequences of your actions are."

That seemed to drain Takeda of his previous ill will. Of course it did; that Aoshi truly did not care whether Takeda profited or not didn't matter. He didn't need Aoshi to agree with his cause. He just needed to know that he owned Aoshi's services.

The businessman sank into the chair behind his desk. "Punishment and fear, you say?"

* * *

><p>Aoshi closed the door to Takeda's office, moved away from it as quickly as he could allow himself. Conversations with his employer always left him feeling like he needed a shower.<p>

But what he needed now was to make it to the monitor room.

It wasn't to be. He received the briefest sense of not being alone before a holoprojector thrimmed. He stopped moving, turned to acknowledge his second-in-command.

Hannya stood by the door to an empty room, apparently looking at him closely. He had crossed his hands behind his back. "Surely you were not entirely honest with Takeda-san?"

Rather than ask how Hannya knew what had been said, or how much of the conversation he'd heard, Aoshi adjusted his glasses.

Hannya pressed. "Surely my Okashira was not entirely honest with Takeda-san?"

"Of course not," he replied.

"I had hoped," Hannya said.

That one caught his attention. Aoshi looked up.

"Death lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain," the other onmitsu murmured. "Sometimes I wonder if it's crushing us."

Aoshi closed his eyes for a short moment. Hannya was well within his rights to express doubt about their current course of action.

"The only way out is forward," he said, opening his eyes.

"Another way out might be down."

Aoshi shook his head once. "We're not samurai. I signed a contract; I didn't sell our souls."

"Only our dignity."

Now he was being ridiculous. Aoshi narrowed his eyes. "I wasn't aware you had a problem, Hannya."

"I understood - and understand - why you accepted it."

"Then what don't you understand?"

Hannya said nothing. Aoshi jerked his head toward the end of the hall, continued moving. He could feel the gauze balance wings drifting near his legs as he went. It wasn't long before Hannya followed him.

They stopped in another corridor, this one outside the Oniwabanshuu quarters.

"Why are we still here?"

"The contract -"

"- means we are employed in the service of trash. We have served him well enough. You know the result of his product. Why stain the Oniwabanshuu's honor with -"

"And leaving in the middle of a contract does not stain the Oniwabanshuu's honor?" Aoshi took his glasses off, tugged one of the wings up to wipe at the lenses. He closed his eyes. "This conversation is over."

"As you wish."

Aoshi tapped a sequence of keys, listened to the locks hiss open. He swung the door inward. "I want you to check the security system. Standard procedure."

"As you wish, Okashira."

There was censure in Hannya's tone. Aoshi didn't allow it to affect him. He understood Hannya's concerns. He even shared them.

He simply understood that they were easily as damned if they stayed as if they left.

* * *

><p>Aoshi pushed the key-tab into the lock and turned it, then entered the master code for the security system. The noise surely gave away his position, but he heard no indication that his presence mattered to Takani. No change in her breathing, no attempt to flee to another part of her quarters.<p>

The doors locked automatically behind him, the security system re-armed itself. He forced himself to ignore the instinctive jolt of alarm at his entrance being sealed without his say-so. The sheer size of this prison meant there were at least three ways out without using his keys or the codes, though Takani might never find them.

He kept his pace measured and audible as he moved toward the bedroom.

Inside, Takani Megumi knelt on the far side of her bed, regarding the generator that kept her away from the window. It continued to whine at the wrong pitch.

"Those doors will stay locked until you cooperate with Takeda."

Only then did she turn to look at him. Her hair whirled as she turned around, long wavy strands a cloud of shimmering motion. The darker colored segments seemed to have a green sheen, in that lighting.

"Naturally," she said, tone dry.

Her sarcasm didn't come from defiance. She was breaking down, though not in the direction Takeda desired: she was ceasing to care if she lived or died. She probably hoped Aoshi would kill her for her insolence; it would spare her having to make the choice of her ethics or her survival.

Time to be blunt. "He'll try physical torture next."

"Let him."

Of course. If she cared nothing for her actual life, how much could the abstract possibility of pain frighten her?

Rather than hammer the point home directly - that she had every reason to fear torture as much as she feared the loss of her soul - he switched tracks. It was sometimes better, with pure intellectuals, to come at the subject from an angle.

"Do you trust yourself?"

She stared at him.

"He won't even have to let you leave the room. You'll have no warning, until you panic every time the door opens." Aoshi paused, then continued, tonelessly, as if it were simple fact and not conjecture designed to intimidate: "You'll snap. You'll agree to cooperate the moment the door opens. Do you trust yourself to practice medicine in the middle of a psychotic break?"

Fear flickered across her face, followed by disbelief, and then she settled back into her world-weary persona. But even the straight line of her mouth and brow, nor even her glasses, could hide the gleam of fear or the hint of desperation in her eyes.

"You can't be sure of that," she said. "You're just guessing. Just like you guessed before that taking space away would make me break. That was you, wasn't it?"

Aoshi made no reply. There was no point confirming or denying surrounding circumstances; regardless of who had seen it first, they had both seen that Takani needed control over her space. Removing her control was what wore on her psyche, more than trapping her.

He let his silence grate by, until it eroded what patience Takani still had. "Why are you here?"

"It was your last chance to end this peacefully," he told her.

"You mean your last chance before Kanryuu punished you," she said, apparently confident of her logic.

A poorly baited verbal trap if he'd ever seen one. He turned away, made it a point to re-arm the security system and each lock individually.


	3. Chapter 3

**Catch Me On The Ground**

_three_

* * *

><p>She said, "Lately, falling's been easy on me<br>A lot like breathing used to be,  
>And call me crazy, but I was thinking<br>Maybe you'd be waiting on the ground  
>To come and catch me."<br>—Matt Nathanson, "Wings"

* * *

><p>Tokyo, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

Six days. This was her sixth day of searching for him, and she still hadn't found him. She was even looking in the right places, she was sure of it.

Seemed like Sagara Sanosuke wasn't an easy man to track down. Sweat rolled along Misao's brow as she walked her speeder through the streets, its tires glowing dimly. The afternoon sun was so bright that everything else seemed unimportant by comparison. Honestly, she half-wondered if she was melting.

One more, she told herself. One more, and then she would go back to her cheap little minshuku in some family's apartment and eat a cucumber and rest. It would be nice and cool in the apartment. Air-conditioned. She could even take a shower if she wanted to. And she did want to. Gods, she really did want a shower.

The Plum Barrel had old-style sliding doors. Misao slid them open, stepped out of her shoes, then slid the doors closed.

It took her a moment to realize what kind of bar she'd walked into. It wasn't just a bar—that would have been bad enough, an unmarried girl walking into a bar—it was an underground gambling haven. Of course.

A dozen or so pairs of eyes turned to look at her. Most of them were calculating, unfriendly. They made it clear that she didn't belong in that seedy, smoke-tinted little room, and that they wanted her to leave. Or she could get hurt.

Misao swallowed but kept her head high. She scanned the room, searching for the face she'd gotten to know because of a still frame.

And, surprisingly, she found it. There he was, dressed in white and black, his hair spiked up. He was sitting next to a redhead she'd never heard of, though. Interesting.

As she drew closer, she could hear their conversation.

"It will be a seven. Four and three."

"All right, I call odds!"

Dice rattled. Somebody pushed a heap of cash Sanosuke's way and he reached out for it. His expression said "relaxed," but the line of his arm as he reached was tense. Even after he piled his winnings in front of him, his shoulders stayed taut.

"A nine. Six and three."

The brunet lifted his head, calling down the table, "Odds again!"

Dice rattled again. Sanosuke raked in more money, but he didn't look happy.

Misao grabbed a zabuton that wasn't in use and set it down near Sanosuke and the redhead. She wasn't dumb enough to try to interrupt. They'd notice her when they noticed her.

In the meantime, she watched Sanosuke and his pet redhead at play. For all that Sanosuke was shouting down the line and collecting money, the redhead was the one who knew what the dice would be.

She wondered if he knew more about the dice than he was letting on. Were they fixed? Or—

Misao tilted her head. There had been stories in Kyoto's underground newslinks about "precogs." Not even the people who blindly trusted the underground links had believed that one. It was just too hard to swallow.

Maybe they'd been right, though, she thought as she watched the redhead predict throw after throw. He didn't predict just "odd" or "even," but what the dice would total and which face each die would roll to.

Sanosuke started up a losing streak. It looked perfectly natural; a run of good luck followed by a run of bad. But the redhead never stopped murmuring numbers and never stopped being right.

And all the while, the redhead kept one pale eye on her.

At long last, once he'd counted his winnings, Sagara turned an eye on her. "All right, kid, you've been pretty patient. I hear you've been looking for me?"

Misao looked at the redhead. "Let's talk somewhere else."

"What, you don't trust Kenshin?" There was something almost cunning in that glance. Was he testing her?

"No." She shook her head. "Not yet, anyway."

Sanosuke blinked. His expression quickly turned into a grin. "Fair enough. Gimme a one-word summary."

"Okina," she said.

He thought a moment, then nodded. "Then let's talk. Table in the far corner?"

She stood, smiled. "Let's go."

The table was far removed from the action. She settled onto one of the pillows, watched as Sagara somehow managed to fold his own long form into a position that might have been comfortable.

"I take it you're the transport back to Kyoto?" His eyes glinted with something that could have been amusement. It could have been the light.

"I am," she replied.

He looked her over. One eyebrow rose higher and higher. "And you're how old?"

"Sixteen." She paused, tilted her head. "You don't think I can?"

"Can you even fly a ship?" That eyebrow had nearly climbed off his face. She wanted to smack the expression to another moon.

"I've flown a few," she said.

"In space?"

Misao looked down. "I'm from Kyoto. You're not—"

"—Not allowed to leave atmo." Sagara sighed. "Well, since I'll have to take you with me anyway, might as well teach you."

She looked up, felt a grin stretch across her mouth. "So the deal's still on?"

He nodded. "The third party pinged me last week. Everything on the list is there and waiting. There's just one problem."

"And that problem is...?"

"Jouto fever. There've been rumors of an outbreak. If C1-7 gets quarantined again..."

"No getting on or off. But what's going to happen to—"

"Your goods? Locked down. They'll send in the bug sniffer microbes. As long as the stuff's clean of fever, we can get it when the quarantine's over."

"I meant the people. In a place like that, how can they keep everybody from getting sick?"

Sagara stared at her for a long while. "You're a weird kid. Good, but weird."

Misao looked away. "I guess most people wouldn't ask about that."

He just grinned. "One, the fever's not usually fatal except to people who've had too much nanite therapy. Two, they use airlocks to keep the city quarantined from itself. Don't worry too much."

"Then I guess I won't," she smiled again, bowed her head. "Nice to meet you. I'm Makimachi Misao."

"Call me Sano," he replied. "The redhead's Himura Kenshin. He answers to just about anything."

The door slammed open. They all jumped at the sound. When a woman streamed through without bothering to take off her shoes, eyes narrowed.

The woman stumbled straight for Himura. Her hair billowed behind her in a wavy tangle, so dark it looked almost green.

She had ocean-folk in her background somewhere. Misao would have bet on it.

The woman collapsed into Himura's arms. It was a picturesque scene. Especially when she tugged at the sleeves of his gi. "You have to help me!"

That was when two men charged in after her. They barely seemed to register that they'd run into a private establishment. They certainly didn't register that they'd run into a private establishment full of angry people.

Somebody tripped one. Sano moved to intercept the other.

"You don't want to mess with us," said the one that had been tripped, reaching for his sword.

Sano simply laughed. "C'mon, you think you scare me?"

He blocked a punch, grabbed the offending arm. A quick jerk and they all heard bone make a sickening crack.

"Look, if you want to make Takeda Kanryuu angry, you just try and stop us from taking the woman back!"

"No try about it! You break into my favorite place, getting your nasty shoes all over the goddamn floor, and you think you're—"

Two gamblers dropped dead.

"Aw, hell," Sano said, voice distant. "Hotei. Goro."

Misao looked toward the door. There was a small reptite there, his golden, slit-pupilled eyes wide and almost glowing in the dim light. His hair was a strange shade of red.

She would have known that face anywhere, under any circumstance, at any angle. She would have recognized him in the traditional onmitsu half mask.

"Beshimi?" The word came out in a breathy little gasp.

He turned his head to look at her. It gave Himura time to kneel, to get his nails under the tatami.

"Misao-chan? What are you doing here?"

The voice was the same. She'd been right. It was Beshimi.

"I—" She cut herself off, shook her head.

Sano moved to stand beside Himura, pushed the dark-haired lady behind them. "Okay, I don't know what you and that chick are mixed up in, but I know Hotei and Goro weren't in it. You wanna tell me what you're doing killing totally uninvolved people?"

"My orders are to take the woman back where she belongs." Beshimi's eyes narrowed. "Don't interfere."

"They weren't interfering! Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?"

"My name doesn't matter." Beshimi's eyes flicked to look at Misao.

She met his eyes, reached around to the back-side of her belt. The throwing knives were still there, of course. She loaded two into her gauntlets so she could use them katar-style.

"Sano, please," she said. "I'm supposed to keep you safe and out of jail until our goods are in my hand."

"If Kenshin's in, I'm in," he said.

"And I cannot simply stand by and watch you injure others and kidnap someone, that I cannot."

The next throw was a mere flick of Beshimi's wrists. For all that she didn't approve of the scum the Edo Oniwabanshuu were working for, she had to give Beshimi credit: he was more than good. He was excellent.

Her knife intercepted the dart before it could hit Sano. The dart's tip clattered against the flat of the blade. It ricocheted harmlessly away, embedding itself in the floor.

And then Himura was moving forward. He'd flipped up the tatami, forcing it to catch a pair of darts. He was almost faster than a blink as he dodged another pair of darts.

She never saw him strike, but the crunch as his fist connected with Beshimi's nose seemed to reverberate through the room.

Beshimi staggered to one knee. He wasn't about to stand up again anytime soon, though. The lurid green of his skin had gone pale.

Misao spared him a glance, watched green scales sparkle as they drifted from his face, dusting the dark uniform. "Himura, Sano, time to beat feet! He won't be alone." Probably. It was a safe bet, anyway.

And she definitely did not want to be around when Beshimi regained consciousness. The explanations she was going to be making would already be convoluted and strange. She didn't want to have to explain that she wasn't betraying her family.

Not to the man who'd taught her to throw knives.

Sano turned around and grabbed the woman by the arm. "Looks like you're coming with us. Since we're all in it now."

The woman tried to struggle, tried to pull away. "Unhand me—"

"Not a chance in hell." Sano's voice had taken a serious tone.

* * *

><p>The speeder made faint humming sounds as it slowed. Misao urged it back toward the ground. Once the wheels had made contact, she hit the hover switch. There was a faint thump as the rest of the speeder's weight returned to the ground.<p>

Sano looked over his shoulder at her. He shook his head with a grin.

That was when the gates to the house swung open. A woman not too much older than Misao came streaming out. If the woman from the tea shop was inhumanly beautiful, then the woman in the kimono who had come out to greet them was the opposite. Very, very beautiful, but equally human and imperfect.

The fact that she carried a sword didn't hurt.

"Kenshin, what's going on?"

"There was some trouble at the teahouse." Himura gave the woman an apologetic look. "Kaoru-dono, this is Takani Megumi. She's studying medicine. Takani-dono, this is Kamiya Kaoru, assistant master of the Kamiya-Kasshin style."

Megumi made a faint hmph noise, as if she had evaluated them all and found them wanting. It was hard work keeping a smile on her face, but she somehow managed not to clobber the woman who'd somehow gotten herself mixed up with Takeda Kanryuu.

Misao waved. "And I'm Makimachi Misao. Don't pay any attention to that crazy woman over there."

The woman called Kaoru turned to give her a relieved smile. "Are you a friend of Sano's or Kenshin's?"

"Well, I just met them both, but," she scratched the back of her head, "well, I'm supposed to keep Sano out of trouble until he does some stuff for my family."

Kaoru's smile turned wry. "Good luck," she murmured.

Misao looked over at Sano, who was now wearing an outraged expression. "I get the feeling I'm going to need it."

Kaoru only smiled as she turned to Megumi. "Takani-san, you really don't need to stay here if you don't want to. I'm sure whatever went wrong at the teahouse can be worked out."

Exactly the wrong thing to say. Misao opened her mouth to mitigate the damage, but Megumi carefully lifted her hair, flipping it over her shoulders. "Why, I would never dream of leaving Ken-san's side."

Which was kind of crazy, considering that by all appearances, she was standing at the gate to Kaoru's home. Not Himura's. Misao looked over at the woman, tried to figure out what in the world could possess her to talk like that.

Kaoru's smile became a stretched, thin thing. It was obviously fake, was obviously being plastered up from the inside. "I see," she said, in a tone that said she didn't see at all and that if she could figure out whose fault this was, she would be having Words with somebody.

"Well, I guess I should go get dinner ready," Kaoru said, still smiling that thin smile.

"That really isn't necessary, Kaoru-dono. I agreed to cook tonight, that I did."

There was something just a little too eager in Himura's tone. Misao watched him closely, but didn't figure it out.

Something else to worry about, she guessed. She was starting to regret ever coming to Tokyo. She'd been here six days and everything was already so tangled.

* * *

><p>Dinner wasn't too bad. Kaoru kept a full kitchen stocked with actual food and not sculptable, flavored protein and complex carbohydrates. It was actually like home.<p>

It wasn't until later that they started on the dishes. Kaoru shooed both the men and her student—Myojin Yahiko, unruly hair, impatient enough that he seemed more interested in the "martial" than the "art"—outside, onto the engawa in the late evening darkness. Misao could hear insects buzzing their nighttime noises before Yahiko loudly shut the door.

It had been clear that Himura and Sano hadn't wanted to discuss the events at the Plum Barrel. Misao didn't exactly blame them, but she also wasn't stupid enough to try and conceal things from the woman who was giving her a place to sleep. Although some details, like Megumi throwing herself into Himura's lap, were probably best left unstated.

And unimplied, Misao decided as she watched Kaoru re-clean her sushi knives. They'd already been cleaned before and after each use, so it was more a habit than an actual cleaning effort. Cleaning was half a Shinto ritual, a spiritual necessity, and half a routine. But the ease and grace with which Kaoru handled those knives, the easy way she wore her sword, told Misao all she needed to know about pissing Kaoru off.

It could very easily be the last mistake she made with all her limbs attached.

Kaoru slid the sushi knives back into their proper place. She fixed Megumi with a look that said that dodging the question would not be appreciated. "So, what's really going on?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Megumi said, voice prim, proper. Practically unassailable in its innocence: not just _I don't know what you're talking about_ but also _It's an insult to think that I would be mixed up in anything that would necessitate that question_.

Misao was starting to dislike Megumi more and more.

Kaoru seemed to let it slide. For long enough to watch Misao finish all the plates, at least. Misao rinsed the porcelain plates off and set them gently in the steamer, closed the lid. The steamer made a hissing noise.

It was different, to be doing so few dishes. And at the end of the night. Back home, they did dishes as soon as a party finished with them, if at all possible. Saved time and effort.

Kaoru started on bowls, cups, and chopsticks while Misao watched the steamer and willed it not to do anything crazy, as technology so often did when it wasn't a motor or lift-tech vehicle and she was within three feet of it. This was a throwdown that needed to happen, if only so it wouldn't happen some other time, in front of other people.

"I understand that Kenshin and Sano don't want to discuss whatever you've dragged them into. They think it'll keep me safe." Her expression said clearly what she thought of that idea, then went frank. "But _you_ could at least have the courtesy to explain." It was delivered in a perfectly calm, possibly even friendly tone of voice.

Misao got the distinct feeling that Kaoru being friendly did not necessarily mean that she would not put her foot down about receiving answers. And, really, she deserved them.

Of course, it was possible she only thought that way since she wanted answers, too. Namely, she wanted to know if Megumi really was involved with Takeda Kanryuu. Beshimi had been carefully nonspecific about who he was working for and where he was going.

It was a possibility. A depressing one. The Makimachi, the Shinomori, and the Kashiwazaki were the ruling houses of the Oniwabanshuu clan. Its honor was her honor. (And Aoshi-sama's and Okina's honor, but Aoshi-sama must not care, if he was working for filth, and Okina didn't know yet.)

The mere thought that Aoshi-sama could whore her family out to something like Kanryuu was both infuriating and sickening.

The steamer pinged. An LED changed from blue to white. Kaoru lifted the steamer's lid and began sorting dishes, hissed a little, most likely at the heat.

Megumi busily ignored Kaoru's refuge in soothing normality. Or, rather, she ignored that they might even need refuge. She stood apart from them, some kind of study in perfection, but there was just a tinge of desperation.

Misao watched the two women, weighed the pros and cons.

"Takeda Kanryuu."

Even saying the name made her heart feel heavy, like it was going to sink into her stomach. Saying the name meant she'd get an answer. One way or another, she'd know.

Megumi shivered at the name. And that was all the answer she needed to see, really. Megumi was somehow connected to Takeda. Beshimi was connected to Takeda. The Oniwabanshuu were working for him, or were working for somebody who was working with him.

Aoshi-sama had whored out her family.

Kaoru reached up to adjust the clip on her obi, only looking away from Megumi and at Misao for a moment. The way her fingers carefully avoided the bee-shaped clasp's stinger made Misao wonder just what it was hiding.

Megumi's expression turned brittle. Her fox charm turned outward. "You know rather a lot. And that ninja seemed to recognize you. Would you care to explain?"

"I've got nothing to hide," except for what was clan confidential, anyway, but explaining that was, naturally, clan confidential.

Kaoru turned to look at her. She'd unhooked the little bee from her obi cord and was playing with it, idly stroking the very tips of her fingernails along the stinger. The stinger glinted good upkeep and looked sharp.

Misao looked down. "That guy who showed up looking for Megumi-san. He's family."

Megumi looked her up and down, then raised one elegantly eloquent eyebrow. She didn't even need to say anything.

"Well, we're clan kin," Misao said.

Kaoru looked at her. It was a patient expression, but the way her fingers played with the needle-sharp pin—especially the way Kaoru slid the bee's stinger in and out, making it lengthen and shorten—told her to start the details rolling. The irritated arch to Kaoru's brow told her to make it happen double-time. "And?"

"And I caught some rumors in Kyoto that he and some others working for a big-name slimeball up here. Didn't know I'd run into them." She squirmed. "Kind of hoped I wouldn't, really."

"Tokyo's a big place," Kaoru said, breezily. "If it hadn't been for Megumi here, you might not have."

Which was skirting by the issue of why somebody who had been chasing Takani Megumi was family to her, and why they weren't tossing her out on her ear. Was it a case of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?

* * *

><p>Tokyo, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

"Failed?" Had anyone not Oniwabanshuu for years heard him, they never would have guessed that the question had a hard edge. He kept his voice level enough that it almost passed for perfectly calm.

He was calm. Mostly calm. Mildly irritated that Takeda was insisting that he witness this conversation.

But Aoshi wasn't angry. Not with any of his men. He kept his gaze trained solidly on Beshimi, never looked to the corner he knew wasn't empty and never even acknowledged that Takeda was in the room.

"I apologize, Okashira." Beshimi bowed his head. Considering that he was already on one knee—an undignified position for a ninja, rooted in customs of traditional dress—it was the ultimate gesture of submission.

His neck was bared before any blade Aoshi might choose to bring down on him for his failure. Not that he had any intentions of killing Beshimi. To kill a clan member over something like this, something that could have happened to any of them? Something that might yet play into his own plans within plans?

No. He'd been a fool to accept this contract and they all knew it. He would not, could not be so lost to sense and honor as to make that mistake. His own loyalty to his clan would not allow it.

"And the rest?"

Beshimi's chin dropped to his chest. "I was distracted. Takani ensnared two men of surprising strength. One tall, connected to the Sekihoutai somehow, a Plum Barrel regular. One short, scarred, otherwise unknown. I failed."

"Are you going to give him another chance, Aoshi?"

Aoshi looked up at the use of his given name. Takeda wanted to add insolence to his crime of interfering in the way the Oniwabanshuu operated? He kept his expression level, but he was tempted to order the man removed from the room. By force, if at all possible.

"I do not execute my men out of temper," he said with calm that he was almost sure was exaggerated. No one seemed to notice.

"They do seem to like you. Do they dislike disappointing you out of personal affection rather than fear of consequences?"

Aoshi almost told him that only a fool needed fear to rule his family.

He watched Kanryuu cut into a steak without reply. A few silent moments passed before the businessman looked up.

"You aren't going to answer my question?"

"How I handle the my men, provided we find and retrieve the woman, is none of your concern." Here he paused to make his point. "No individual of the Oniwabanshuu, save myself, answers to you. This is your final warning."

With that, he left Kanryuu's dining room, with both Beshimi and Hannya in tow. Hannya phased into view just before Aoshi crossed the threshhold. Dimly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hannya bow before vanishing yet again; it was both a polite greeting and a rude exit.

Only Hannya could be so professionally insolent.

He waited until they reached his office to ask the one question that had been on his mind since receiving this news.

"What could distract a trained and experienced onmitsu from his target and the obstacles?"

Beshimi was silent for a long, telling moment. When he spoke, he looked up, golden gaze absurdly piercing in the dim lighting of the room. "Makimachi Misao."

Aoshi quelled his first reply—_Okina would never_—and took a deep breath. There were no attachments when in service. Not personal ones. "Did she attack you directly?"

"No, Okashira. But she did defend the one from the Sekihoutai."

Obviously on a coinciding mission. Her first bodyguard detail? Working as the contact for Okina's latest smuggler in Tokyo? Some other relatively safe job, to keep her from seeking the deep water of onmitsu work? They might never have crossed paths, were it not for circumstances.

She had not attacked them directly. And so long as she did not, they would not be required to neutralize her. They could even afford to ignore her presence, should they so choose. Then, after their contract with Kanryuu ended, they could collect her.

Or support her.

"Dismissed, Beshimi."

The reptite onmitsu stood smoothly and left the room. In the corner, Hannya's holo projector thrimmed as the hologram concealing his presence faded.

"I assume you heard everything?" Aoshi took off his glasses, began cleaning them.

"I heard." Hannya's voice actually was toneless for once, carefully devoid of even the faintest tremor of hidden meaning.

"You have a recommendation?"

"We need more information if we're to come to any sort of decision."

That wasn't exactly a surprise. Unfortunately, it would be difficult to arrange. Kanryuu wanted results: he wanted his money and his med student to modify the nanotechnology in his flagship drug. And he would become difficult if he didn't have his way as soon as Aoshi could arrange it.

Aoshi narrowed his eyes at the lenses, checking for any stubborn smudges, then put his glasses back on. He closed his eyes for a moment, then murmured, "For now, we find Takani."

"And the other matter?"

"Let it wait."

Hannya nodded. "Once I've found Takani?"

"Take Beshimi and Hyottoko. I want Beshimi on point."

"And Kanryuu?" A pause. "He won't be pleased."

"I'll handle him. Just find Takani."

"As my Okashira wishes." _Thrim._

Hannya vanished from sight, though he hadn't left yet.

He knew when he was alone in the room, though he couldn't have said how. Hannya was both his most experienced operative and his oldest friend. They knew each other too well.

* * *

><p>He had never expected to find Shikijou lingering on the roof. Shikijou's massive strength meant massive weight, and shark-folk weren't anywhere near as agile in the air or on the ground as they were in water. They didn't have the versatility of ocean-folk.<p>

Shikijou's gaze slid to him. "Aoshi-sama. Looking for me?"

"No word from our employer?"

The other onmitsu simply grinned. "Oh, he's in his office stamping his feet and howling at the moons."

Aoshi looked up. The other moons hadn't yet risen, though the sun and the planet had both set.

"You know what I mean. He's pitching the biggest tantrum I've ever seen."

And that, Aoshi knew, would be why Shikijou was on the roof. It wasn't that he minded that sort of behavior; they all knew Shikijou did enough of it himself. He simply didn't like dealing with angry people from anything other than a position of power.

And Kanryuu had a nasty habit of turning his anger outwards in ways that would get him killed by an irritated onmitsu, were Aoshi not so determined to fulfill their contract. The man didn't seem to understand that money held no sway over any of them. Nor did he grasp the idea that there were many ways for a man to die and they were well-versed in all of them.

Shikijou sent a wry look his way. "You ever miss being unemployed?"

"All the time," Aoshi said, just as dry.

"He's just getting less and less worth the trouble."

"We'll finish the Takani business," he said. "Our contract ends soon."

"You suddenly turn into a precog?" Shikijou's gaze turned canny, almost sly.

Aoshi bit down on the response that he had always been precognitive. "It's a short-term contract."

Shikijou grinned, folded his hands on the back of his head and leaned back, relaxing just a fraction. "Lucky us. So, are we going back to Kyoto after this, like Hannya wants, or are we taking on a new contract?"

Aoshi weighed his responses. He could take that comment at face level and give a direct—if nonspecific—summation of his plans. Or he could choose to acknowledge the question within that question. Or he could do the smart thing and not answer.

He owed the other man more than that.

"There is a complication. Hannya's reason for returning to Kyoto is here."

Shikijou tripped. It was just a momentary loss of balance, easy to do if you weren't particularly agile and you were perched on a roof. But Shikijou was onmitsu, had been born into one onmitsu clan and adopted into the Oniwabanshuu. That sort of mistake was unexpected.

"Don't do that in combat."

The expression on Shikijou's face was pure surprise. "Misao? You mean Misao? Short, dark hair, always smiling?"

"Don't say her name again while we're in Kanryuu's employ."

Shikijou blinked, then narrowed his eyes, nodding. If Kanryuu knew of Misao's existence, he might not understand the distinctions between the Kyoto cell and Aoshi's. And, even if he didn't insist that Misao should rightfully be in his employ, there was no guarantee he wouldn't target her in misplaced anger at the Oniwabanshuu.

"You're saying that if she's still here when our contract ends, we'd...?"

"We might."

He could still see Shikijou's grotesque grin when he left the roof.

* * *

><p>He found Beshimi and Hyottoko in the Oniwabanshuu quarters. The cameras had been cut, naturally, with admirable wire-work. Hyottoko had always been surprisingly nimble when it came to disabling technology.<p>

Aoshi looked from Beshimi to Hyottoko. It was in the swamp frog's nature to look tired, but there was an unusual gleam in his eyes. He looked more alive than he'd dared in months.

Even Beshimi, whose energy only flagged when he was sunning, seemed mildly more animated than usual.

"You've spread the news," he said.

Beshimi's gaze slid to Hyottoko for a moment.

Aoshi tilted his head to look at Hyottoko. The other man was running his index finger over one of the flamethrower's output tubes. Was his fire-breathing mask bothering him?

Swamp frogs had thick, blubbery skin. Of them all, the sensation of metal held tightly to his face would rightfully bother Hyottoko the least. But even Hyottoko was mortal. He would have to feel pain from wearing a mask that fed napalm directly into his mouth, even if he only felt it occasionally.

After all, Hyottoko's every breath was filtered through fumes.

Hyottoko looked from Aoshi to Beshimi, then began to move his fingers and arms in a slow, languorous series of movements. At one point, he indicated Beshimi. It took him a while because he took his time, but eventually he signaled the end of his question by drawing a line with his fingers and tilting his head to one side.

Aoshi nodded. "You are correct."

Beshimi scowled. "It's more complicated than that"

"No. For whatever reason, you failed to retrieve Takani. It is that simple."

Another question from Hyottoko. He indicated himself, then Beshimi, briefly tapped his left shoulder, and drew the line again. As an afterthought, he tilted his head.

"After a fashion." Aoshi paused, then allowed a hint of command to slide into his voice. "Beshimi. Hannya is tracking Takani down. He and Hyottoko will support your effort to retrieve her."

Hyottoko's next question was short. He pointed to Beshimi, cocked his head to one side, and held up one finger.

"Yes."

Beshimi's wide eyes went wider, while Hyottoko's eyes drooped even more. Taking point was both a burden and a coveted sign of trust. Though if Beshimi thought it was anything more than an opportunity to make up for his previous failure, he would quickly learn otherwise.

"Two helpers, Beshimi." And one of them was Hannya. "Do not fail me again."


	4. Chapter 4

**Catch Me On The Ground**

_four_

* * *

><p>She said, "Lately, falling's been easy on me<br>A lot like breathing used to be,  
>And call me crazy, but I was thinking<br>Maybe you'd be waiting on the ground  
>To come and catch me."<br>—Matt Nathanson, "Wings"

* * *

><p>Tokyo, Meiji Cycle 11: Summer<p>

Misao watched the sun set over her ninth day in Tokyo. The planet was still visible in the distance, a blue-green marble in the sky, but the other moons hadn't yet risen. Some of them had been up throughout the day and were setting over other cities, but others—

Well, there was one, just beginning to rise. It was milk-white, a paler coin in a pale violet sky.

Misao watched it, watched dark shapes fly across its face. There were plenty of black silhouettes drifting across the sky, most of them probably ships. A few of them, though, were something else. She watched what looked like scalloped wings and shuddered at the thought.

The new government had done bad things, like completely eradicate old social classes to make a brand new mess. Then there had been the sword ban—a completely ass-brained idea, even Okina had said so more than once, and Okina had been determined never to criticize the new government too loudly.

It had also done good things, like arm all the Anti-Oni Bases with jets, which were legally required to do flyovers and patrol civilized airspace. That had a better shot at keeping the flying oni out of everyone's hair than anything the Shogunate had tried.

She settled onto the engawa, adjusted the wrist ring of her gauntlets. The summer heat had penetrated even the shaded rooms, so she might as well enjoy the sunset with some cool green tea.

Kaoru and Yahiko were going at it in the courtyard. They'd traded in their swords for bokken and were viciously chasing each other through the grass and dust. For all intents and purposes, the Assistant Master of the Kamiya Kasshin Ryu wanted to brain her student.

Considering the force of Yahiko's swings, the feeling was entirely mutual.

Megumi tucked herself in beside her. The older woman's pale face was turned toward Kaoru's and Yahiko's attempts to kill each other with mostly nonlethal weapons, but her dark, glistening eyes were watching Misao.

Misao cracked a grin, picked up her chawan in both hands and took a sip. The thin green tea somehow managed to taste just the right side of too bitter and too sweet. "Shouldn't you be torturing your precious Ken-san?"

Megumi cast a glance at him. Her lips were pouty and full. They quirked downward just a tad before the expression smoothed itself away. "There's a reason I'm sitting here and not over there."

"Don't feel like getting beaned in the face with a lead-tipped piece of wood?" Misao raised an eyebrow, her lips twitching into a smile.

Megumi's response was a chilly look. "I want to make sure you aren't with them."

"I'm here because I've got a deal going with..." She looked up, searched the courtyard until she found him, then pointed at Sano. He seemed oblivious to the attention. "That idiot over there. Why are you here?"

"Why, because Ken-san deserves to be in better hands than some sweaty girl's." Megumi covered her mouth with her hand and chuckled.

Misao felt her eyebrow twitch. That sweaty girl was smart, strong, apparently ruthless in a fight, and had yet to kick Megumi's crazy, trouble-making ass out. All in all, she was shaping up to be a better person than Megumi.

She didn't answer immediately, though. Instead, she watched the lead tip of Kaoru's bokken crack into Yahiko's shoulder, causing him to drop his weapon. It thumped against the top of his head in a lovetap, letting him know the fight was over.

Misao looked at Megumi out of the corner of her eye. "Look, maybe you're not from this moon, but around here, sane people would be grateful to Kamiya Kaoru. If you're running from the Oniwabanshuu, you're not going to bring her anything but trouble."

Megumi tossed her head, her eyes narrowing. The amused glint in her eyes changed to an angry gleam. The other woman might have been intentionally blind to common courtesy and the danger she was putting a bunch of people in, but she did, apparently, know how to smolder.

"If you want help so badly, you're going to have to start giving us some answers. But you've been sandbagging us on purpose for seventy-two straight hours."

Megumi looked away.

"If you had your head on straight, I'd be the least of your problems. The thing you need to be worried about is whether Kaoru's going to decide that she doesn't want to get dead and that she wants you out of her dojo. So if I were you, I'd make a little effort."

But Megumi wasn't going to listen. She leaned in a little closer, her lips parting just a little wider than normal. "Just tell me you're not one of them. Not one of their Okashira's little spies."

"I'm not spying for him," Misao said.

So Aoshi-sama was around, she thought. She breathed in deep, tried to throw away the hurt, tried to live in the now. She couldn't do anything about his choices. But did he have to make such an obviously bad one?

She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, the dojo's gate was wide open. Kaoru tossed away her bokken and drew her sword on the man who was coming through the gate.

Hyottoko, she realized. He liked to call himself The Great Hyottoko. She'd mimicked him to his face, once, and he'd simply laughed.

Across the courtyard, Sanosuke was uncurling from his relaxed position. He stood slowly, deliberately. The way he moved into a fighting stance—no movement out of place, no hint of fear—was fitting for a smuggler-gladiator.

What to do, what to do?

There was only one thing she could do. Misao drew her knives, mentally charted the swiftest course to get between Sano and Hyottoko.

"No." Megumi's voice was a bare whisper. "Please no."

Two different instincts warred inside her. She couldn't just walk away from someone who was that scared, that desperate. But she couldn't help her, either.

Misao turned, gave Megumi a little push. "Go inside and put your back to a corner."

Megumi made a strangled noise in her throat, but after a moment she clambered onto the engawa and slid open one of the shoji doors. The door hissed closed behind her.

Misao thrust two of the kunai into her gauntlets and ran. Her braid smacked against her thighs as she ducked and wove, skidding to a stop in front of Sano with her arms in front of her face.

Hyottoko pointed at the door Megumi had gone through, flashing signs almost too quickly for Misao to follow. Apparently, his sign language had grown in her absence. He drew an ending line and then jerked his head in an emphatic nod.

His tired eyes looked alive, for once not drooping closed.

Misao pushed one foot back, steadying into a defensive position.

Sano tilted his head to one side. "Anybody know what he's saying?"

"It's an old wartime sign language," Himura murmured. He slowly moved his hand to his sword's sheath, resting his thumb under the hilt guard. "He's here for Megumi-dono. Yahiko, if you would?"

Misao watched from the corner of her eye as Yahiko headed toward the dojo, stopping to pull a sword out from under the engawa. He drew it even before he headed inside. Kaoru moved to protect her student, standing at the door. She made for a beautiful sentinel, with a drawn blade reflecting sunset in her hands even as the darkening sky cast her half in shadow.

Hyottoko's eyes gleamed. He pointed to Sano, then jerked his fingers in an instantly recognizable gesture: _Come here_.

"You want me, huh?" She could hear him crack his knuckles behind her.

"Sano, wait, please! I'm supposed to be keeping you out of the hospital!" And out of prison and out of the morgue, but the LEOs wouldn't be showing up anytime soon and Hyottoko wouldn't kill anyone in front of her unless he had to.

Recognition flickered across Hyottoko's face. He lingered over drawing a torch from his belt. His eyes never left hers.

Sano's hand gripped her shoulder. She turned to look up at him.

His expression was almost peaceful. He wasn't smiling, but it was still obvious that he wasn't a gladiator for lack of any other way to leave the moon. He genuinely enjoyed the fight.

"Don't worry. I'm not the one who's going to end up in the hospital." Sano thumbed his nose.

Hyottoko stamped a foot. The ground shook. When they all turned to look at him, he crossed his arms over his chest and inclined his head.

"Men," Misao muttered.

Sano moved forward. He darted around her before she could intercept, fist raised in what would be a hell of a right hook if it connected.

Hyottoko wasn't always particularly nimble. He was faster than his size suggested he would be, but moving all that weight around quickly wasn't easy for him. Especially with the napalm tank he carried on his back.

He made no effort to dodge Sano's blow.

Himura watched them, eyes narrowed. "Why isn't he moving?"

A quick flick of Hyottoko's wrist lit the torch in his hand.

The napalm tank made a hissing sound. Jelly sprayed from his mask, clung to the ground, to blades of grass.

There was no way to get out of the way in time. Sano flung himself to one side, but the napalm clung to his right arm. He hissed in pain, voice going hoarse as he growled words Misao had never heard used so fervently, one bandaged hand slapping at the sticky embers.

Like that was going to work. Misao took one look at him and dashed into the dojo, hauled the little fire extinguisher down from its place by the first aid kit. She sprinted to Sano's side, pulled the extinguisher's tab.

"Don't breathe this in," she said, hosing his arm down with it.

The extinguisher hissed. A powdery white smoke poured from the nose, covering his arm. The embers fizzed and died out and Misao brushed the sticky gobbets of gasoline from his arm.

"Yeeow," Sano hissed. "That burns, that burns!"

The skin was going red, where it wasn't blistered and charred. It was the most revolting smell she'd ever encountered, all smoky and almost sweet.

Even as she wanted to help him, Misao refused to feel any sympathy. "Don't go charging at him again."

Himura tilted his head. He was calculating something, Misao could see. The katana slid free of its sheath even as he moved in front of Hyottoko, dust rising from the ground beneath his feet.

"I will be your opponent." There was an edge in his mild voice. Listening to it was like taking a sip of warm, comforting tea and finding a human finger in the chawan.

Hyottoko tilted his head. The message he signed with a few quick gestures was short, bordered on rude.

"Burns don't worry me in the least, that they do not."

Hyottoko tilted his head as if puzzled, then jerked his finger in that come here gesture again.

Himura didn't move. His gaze slid to Sano, who was gritting his teeth against the pain of the burns on his arm. His grip on his sword tightened for a moment.

Himura was angry, she realized. He was angry, and he wasn't saying a word about it, wasn't blustering or grandstanding. The fight wasn't important because Hyottoko had made it personal or even because he particularly wanted to win.

The fight was important because Sano was hurt, Kaoru and Yahiko were at risk, and Megumi was counting on them.

Hyottoko squared himself against Himura, threw his shoulders back. He was probably adjusting the tank he was carrying.

Fire and jelly spurted from the mask's mouth. It was like some sort of hideously destructive vomit.

Only Himura wasn't in pain. None of the jellied gasoline even touched him. He spun the sword by the very base of its hilt in a clockwise motion, almost too fast for her to see. The movement somehow turned aside the napalm.

Himura could break physics?

No, not quite. Some of the jelly stuck to the katana. She could see the sword heat up in spots. Embers flared, died, fell in a shower of sparks. It was half frightening and half awe-inspiring. Beautiful.

Sano rushed forward again. He dodged around the spurt of fire, swerved around Himura and his amazing flame retardant katana, and struck the tank with his left fist. The metal made an awful crunch, screeching as it gave underneath his gauntlet.

"Oh, not good," she said, was saying just as Sano grabbed the tube in one hand and yanked. He must have pulled hard, or twisted just right, because he managed to get one of the tubes out.

Napalm went everywhere. Neither stupid nor suicidal, Hyottoko immediately snuffed his torch — tossing it far away — and shrugged the tank off, throwing that away from him, too. Without warning, without slowing, he stopped moving at all.

Something was wrong with him. He began pulling at the mask, tugging fiercely. He was making noises that she could hear above the whip-snap of the flames that still burned on the ground. Finally, the mask came free, taking some of the skin near his mouth with it.

He bent at the waist, vomited something thick and black. Napalm, she realized. He was lucky it hadn't been ignited, but still. The noises he made were pure pain, agonized and agonizing to hear.

And he was bleeding from the corner of his jaw, she realized, where the mask had cut him.

The instinct to move forward, to make sure he was all right, rose up like a tidal wave. Every jangling nerve told her to help him. She even took a step toward Hyottoko, unsure what to do but sure she had to do something.

Sano let his breath hiss through his teeth. She whirled, took a step toward him. He was on the ground, clutching his apparently useless right arm. His expression had gone tight from pain.

The dojo door slid open, nudged by someone's toe. There was a long, long moment of silence and watchfulness before Yahiko came out. His sword was naked in his hand, its empty sheath still slung along his back.

Megumi followed him, settling a pair of glasses over her eyes. She was carrying a first aid kit in one hand.

Her expression turned cross. "You used a fire extinguisher on someone in contact with napalm? Genius! Let's add skin irritation to third degree burns, I'm sure—"

She stopped talking when she got closer. Despite the kimono, despite the labcoat, she lunged forward. It wasn't long before she had Sano's arm in her hands.

Her expression changed from worry to frustration to confusion, relief, and back again. "I can fix this. I can fix this."

"Megumi-dono?" Kenshin sheathed his sword and turned to regard them, looking baffled. "You should be inside, I believe you should."

"I know a little first aid," Megumi replied, as if that explained why she'd abandoned the relative safety of the dojo.

"Make it quick. Kenshin's right," Yahiko said. His grip on his sword kept shifting, as if he were on edge.

It wasn't like Misao could blame him. She looked around, listening as closely as she could. Oniwabanshuu didn't fight alone. Where one was, there were sure to be others—especially since Beshimi had failed to drag Megumi back the first time. Beshimi had to be here somewhere, and maybe Shikijou or Hannya.

Megumi opened her first aid kit. "Have you had a nanite inoculation?"

"Yeah, when I was a kid."

"How many years ago?"

Sano gave her a look that was partially dubious and mostly confused. "At least ten?"

"As long as it was within the last twenty years, this should be fine." She was removing a sequence of vials filled with clear fluid and a syringe gun with a needle that might have inoculated a horse.

Himura gave her a hard look. "Nanite therapy?"

Megumi only gave him a passing glance, opting instead to pull an aerosol can from within the bag. Sano hissed at the sting of whatever she was spraying on his arm.

Misao heard footsteps as somebody flung himself forward. She turned around, took a half step toward Yahiko as he moved in front of Megumi, his arms swinging the sword out and up.

One poison dart caught the flat of Yahiko's sword, fell harmlessly to the dirt.

The other sank into flesh with a sick tearing sound.

Yahiko gave a faint cry. It was loud in her ears, impossibly loud against the sudden stillness, the sudden silence everywhere else.

Sano reached up, steadying the boy by placing one splayed hand on his back.

Himura went still. Not the harsh, edgy stiffness of an angry cat, but the smooth, liquid relaxation of the ocean as it dragged a swimmer under. The coiled, curling tension of ocean-folk preparing to strike.

What followed was a blur of red and white and green, fire-colored hair whipping to one side while a maroon gi flowed the opposite way. Someone small and scaled tried to stream by him.

Against anyone else, it might have worked.

The sword swung out in a river of silver, hard and fast. A crunch echoed and Beshimi faltered, dropping to one knee. The sword flashed again. Flesh and scales gave way under the edge.

Hyottoko made a keening sound low in his throat. He heaved himself to his feet, lumbered forward to clap one large hand against Beshimi's bleeding shoulder wound.

In the distance, something made a thrimming sound. After that, things went chaotic.

Misao caught a glimpse of Megumi sweeping a reeling Yahiko off his feet and toward the house. In the next instant, she saw red hair sweeping toward dull white duraplas while perma-steel claws clashed with a sword.

She planted herself between Sano and the chaos, her kunai crossed in front of her.

But neither combatant went near her or Sano. They were focused entirely on each other.

Himura staggered backward, sliding through sand and grass with one outstretched hand digging into the dirt. The momentum of his fall didn't stop until he was halfway across the courtyard. He didn't cry out, gave no sign that he was in pain save the ginger way he stood and then touched his fingers to his bloodied lip. He gripped his chin in one hand, jerked his wrist one way and turned his head the other. The crack and pop of a joint being forced back into position filled the courtyard.

Hannya took a step back in his surprise. He pulled his hands toward his face, claws forming a defensive position. But the way he moved was stiff, unsteady. After a moment, he bowed and picked Beshimi up by the scruff of his neck.

Misao could hear the faint metallic clicks as Hannya carefully adjusted his grip on the smaller onmitsu.

"The Oniwabanshuu will give you time to tend your dead," Hannya said. The sheen on his mask radiated tension. This was a ceasefire, not a truce.

Himura hadn't said a word, but now his eyes narrowed. "If you're giving up so easily, I wonder what you meant to accomplish, I do."

Hannya said nothing. The texture of his silence was questioning, angrily so.

Sano rose to his feet in one smooth movement that ended only when he was in an offensive stance, cracking the knuckles of his left hand by curling it into a fist and pressing it against his thigh. His right arm stayed limp. "Aw, you can't be leaving just yet! We were just getting—"

How Hyottoko managed to silence Sano with just a single rude gesture—which he immediately downgraded at Hannya's sudden radiating of irritation—Misao wasn't sure, but he stopped talking.

"Explain yourselves," Himura said one last time, his tone dangerously quiet.

"We owe no further courtesy to an enemy."

Hannya looked over to her. Misao sheathed her blades on instinct, her spine going stiff.

In response, Hannya inclined his head, his mask's horns tilting. He gave her a bow that might have been smooth, if she hadn't seen the way he hesitated before straightening. Then he turned away, shifting his grip on Beshimi once more.

As quickly and suddenly as they had arrived, the Edo Castle Oniwabanshuu left.

Himura turned to look at her. His eyes looked hard in the murky shadows and half-light of nightfall, even if the upward curve of his bloodied mouth was gentle.

"I think we need to talk, Misao-dono, that I do," he murmured.

Misao nodded. She wanted to say that she could explain, but how was she supposed to explain that the Edo Castle Oniwabanshuu were her family? Especially when she was onmitsu too?

* * *

><p>Inside the dojo, Kaoru and Megumi were clustered around Yahiko. Kaoru was pressing a steaming cloth to his forehead while Megumi tapped a sequence of keys on a small laptop. Lines of code screamed past.<p>

"He'll live," Megumi whispered. "Kaoru, I promise I'll get him through this."

Kaoru swallowed so hard her throat moved.

"Misao-dono." Himura's voice was quiet, but the tone was firm. "Do you know the poison he used?"

"I don't," she said, mentally flashing back to the few lessons on poisons Beshimi had given her, before Aoshi-sama had put a stop to them. "He used to use a habu-venom base, but if he's changed enough to work for Kanryuu, he could have changed his poison."

Himura nodded, reached out and touched Kaoru's shoulder.

Yahiko gave a wet cry. His voice turned sharp, and then shallow. He began to gasp for breath, each hitch of his voice shorter and higher pitched, thick and wet, almost gurgling.

"His lungs! Kaoru, Ken-san, move! He needs space."

Both Kaoru and Himura stepped backward immediately, away from Yahiko but not too close to the door. Kaoru's hands tightened into fists, curled up by her sides. Himura kept his hand on her shoulder.

Megumi lifted Yahiko until he was almost sitting up, leaning against her. She pressed two fingers to his chin, tilting his head and opening his mouth. "It can't be habu-based; habu venom isn't this deadly."

"Add another toxin, Megumi-dono, and it can be lethal. Especially to the young."

Megumi paled for an instant, but then her expression hardened. She rolled up her sleeves. "Kaoru, keep him balanced like this. He needs to clear the water from his lungs. Ken-san, bring me my first aid kit. I need antivenin twelve!"

Himura dashed from the room, yet again a blur of red. Kaoru settled in behind Yahiko, letting him brace his weight against her.

Misao watched as Himura returned with a thick white case. His hands were steady as he sifted through the snakebite supplies, sorting vial after vial. The set of his jaw belay the outward calm appearance. It didn't take an onmitsu to see he was angry.

Antivenin twelve was a clear liquid. Megumi drew it carefully, her eyes clearly on the measurements, and then injected it into the vein on Yahiko's other arm.

"Go," Megumi murmured. "He needs to breathe, and I need to work."

Himura looked from Yahiko to Megumi and back again. He stood to leave, clasping one hand on Kaoru's shoulder. His expression softened even as she turned to look up at him.

"He'll make it," Himura told her. "He's stronger than the Oniwabanshuu credit him."

The line of Kaoru's jaw trembled, even as she smoothed one hand along the side of Yahiko's face. Her high-angled cheekbones looked fragile in the low buzz of the sensor lights. Her fingers shook.

"I'm not leaving him."

Megumi's expression softened, but then she turned back to the laptop. More code flew by on the tiny screen. Megumi tapped a few more keys, watched ones and zeroes while keeping an eye on Yahiko.

A monitor beeped, long and loud, uninterrupted rather than a measured heartbeat rhythm.

Kaoru's face whitened, the line of her jaw tightening.

Megumi ripped herself away from the keyboard, pressing her ear to Yahiko's chest. "Lay him flat," she snapped, adjusting his neck and opening his mouth as soon as Kaoru had done so.

Megumi pressed two fingers to his sternum, then lay one hand next to her fingers. She threaded her other hand above the one on his chest and began to push down.

"Kaoru! Pair of wands in my medikit; I need them," she said, before murmuring, "Thirteen... fourteen... fifteen—"

Kaoru was up and digging through the kit within seconds. She pulled vials and bandages out and set them aside almost at random. Every motion was jerky, disjointed, hurried.

Megumi bent to breathe into Yahiko's mouth, pinching his nose shut. She gave two deep breaths as quickly as she could and returned to the compressions. Her expression bordered on frantic as she counted again, gave him two more breaths, and then went back to the compressions.

All the while, despite her efforts, the machine continued its flatline tone.

Megumi breathed into his open mouth a third time. When she straightened, she hissed, "Misao! You breathe, I count."

Misao planted herself by Yahiko's head. "Until his chest rises?"

"Yes! Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—"

Misao didn't bother checking for a pulse. That horrible flat tone was still sounding, ringing in her ears. She watched his chest rise.

Megumi continued to push down on his ribs, counting under her breath.

Bare skin slapped against wood, loud, in a tumbling, harum-scarum rhythm.

Misao looked up. Kaoru had the pair of wands in her hands, was wordlessly offering them to Megumi.

The other woman took them, flipped them in her hands, and pulled a pair of plastic-wrapped syringes from their lower ends. She ripped the syringes from their plastic bags, popped the caps, and then jabbed Yahiko, one immediately after the other.

Then she pushed in on his chest again, still counting in a low, repetitive murmur.

The laptop blipped. Just a quick note, nothing to prove that his heart had started to beat again. Then another, and another, slow at first but steadying into a more natural-sounding rhythm.

"The epinephrine is letting him breathe, for now," Megumi said, even as she reached out for the bag.

Kaoru went to get it, handed it to her. "For now?"

Megumi didn't answer. Instead, she dug through the bag, eventually pulling out a pair of vials full of clear fluid.

No, not quite clear. Sparkling flecks of red drifted through. She pulled an empty syringe from a pocket in her medikit, placed it in her lap, and then withdrew a programming gun from the bag.

Her movements as she filled the syringe with the drug, then loaded it into the programming gun and connected the gun to her laptop were quick, efficient. Experienced.

Her fingers clicked against the keys. She adjusted her glasses and then inspected whatever code she'd written.

Misao could only watch as Kaoru opened her mouth to speak and then went silent.

She closed her eyes for a moment when Megumi slid the needle into a vein on Yahiko's arm.

Seconds blurred by, slurred themselves into minutes that stretched, lazily, into hours. Her time sense went syrupy, as slow as the sweat that dripped along Yahiko's brow. She only knew that she startled when Yahiko cried out, and that Kaoru took it even worse. The other woman flinched every time.

Megumi always kept one eye on Yahiko and one eye on the laptop, on the lines of nanotherapy code scrolling down.

At last, Yahiko's breaths seemed to come a little easier. Sweat stopped beading along his temples.

"I've gotten him past the worst of it," Megumi said. "He'll need regular rounds of nanotherapy for a few weeks, but he should make a full recovery."

Kaoru stood, then, placed one hand on Megumi's shoulder. Her jaw unclenched, eyes dancing with a mixture of hope, of gratitude, of relief.

"Thank you," she said.

Megumi placed one hand over Kaoru's, but then folded her hands in her lap and looked down. "It's my fault he was hurt."

Kaoru was quiet for a little while, before her expression hardened into determination. "It isn't anybody's _fault_, Megumi."

Megumi only shook her head and brushed Kaoru's hand away from her shoulder. "He needs to rest. I'll keep an eye on him."

Kaoru made a soft sigh low in her throat and looked from Yahiko, back to Megumi, and back again. After a moment of thought, she nodded.

"Then keep watch a little longer." Her voice broke on the last word. "I'll... go tell Kenshin."

She slipped the door open and vanished into the dark courtyard. Her tabi clattered on the engawa, and then went silent in a rush of air. Misao pictured her falling.

The night shivered, drew taut as a strangling wire, around Kaoru's, "It's Yahiko—!"

Himura and Sanosuke soon appeared, looking half out of breath and all worriedly disbelieving. Something warmed inside her to watch their faces turn from blatant fear to relief.

"Yahiko is..." Himura lapsed into silence, then smiled wryly. "You gave us quite a scare, Kaoru-dono, that you did."

Sano rubbed the back of his neck, as if awkward, but his voice was disgruntled. "Don't know if I'm ever gonna forgive you for that one, Jou-chan."

Megumi turned her gaze back to Yahiko, apparently weighing pros and cons in her head. Finally she looked up and informed them all, "He's just come through a serious trauma to his central nervous system. He needs rest and space to breathe."

"Don't think you're going to get out of explaining just how the hell you're mixed up with Kanryuu, fox woman," Sano said.

At the same time Himura turned a mild-as-milk gaze on her. "Yahiko-kun needs space, and I think we should hear your story in full, Misao-dono. The Oniwabanshuu seemed to know you quite well."

"You already know they're clan relatives of mine. What else is there to tell you?"

"Simple clan relatives would not have been so thorough in avoiding attacking you, they would not." He paused, and in the darkness his eyes gleamed almost like bronze. "Have you ever heard the term 'stalking horse,' Misao-dono?"

"You think I'm here... what, so I can draw Megumi-san into their reach? I'm not. I'm not even the same cell as these Oniwabanshuu."

He didn't say anything. Sano glared at her a moment, but then the empty vial of nanite serum drew his eye. Kaoru looked from Himura, back to her, and back.

"They're my family. I grew up with them," Misao said, at last. "That doesn't mean I think they're right. I'm not going to betray you to them."

Not that Aoshi-sama would have asked her to. Probably. Even if he'd changed enough to work for Kanryuu, he wouldn't, right?

* * *

><p>Misao, Himura, Sano, and Kaoru were ensconced in one of the main dining rooms when footsteps clattered on the engawa and the door slid open. Kaoru half jumped in her seat, while Sano looked up from the wall he was leaning against before narrowing his eyes and pointedly looking away. Himura looked up from his tea as if he had known she was coming all along; considering the precog weirdness he'd shown, he probably had.<p>

"I hope you are ready to shed light on certain matters, Megumi-dono, that I do."

Megumi knelt across from Himura. She seemed to fold gracefully, hair drifting around her. Her lab coat and kimono moved in perfect, picturesque patterns as she sat.

Sano shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He rubbed one of the unburnt spots on his arm. "You know your way around medical nanotech if you just whipped up an antidote like that."

"And I should," Megumi replied. Her voice was so soft that it sounded less like a boast and more like she hated herself. "I was studying to be a doctor."

Sano's breath hissed through his teeth. They all looked his way, but he clenched his jaw and shook his head once. Himura tilted his head for a moment, as if confused or attempting to read Sano's mind, before he looked back to Megumi.

Himura nodded once. "Carrying on the family tradition, then, I see."

That drew a startled look from Kaoru. She dropped her bee pendant onto the table, where it skittered along the synthwood. "Family tradition?"

Himura didn't say anything. Maybe he was waiting for Megumi to tell them herself. But she didn't say anything either, only watched Kaoru push the stinging clasp around the table.

Finally, she sighed and said, "My clan is all doctors. We have been for generations."

"Kanryuu doesn't sound like the kind of person to bother with a family of doctors." Kaoru reached out with one arm, stopping the bee's progress along the table with a finger.

"My advisor in Tokyo University was involved with him. Gambling debts, I think."

Things from the newslinks flashed back, fitted together. "The med student. You're the med student. And the charity doctor — I'm gonna guess he was your advisor?"

"Are you saying she's the girl the newslinks are talking about?" Kaoru shot a worried look Misao's way, before turning back to study Megumi. "I thought that was just a rumor."

Misao shrugged. "Newslinks all the way over in Kyoto were talking about it, so maybe? Rumor from Tokyo doesn't make it all the way out there unless it's really juicy or there's something to it." Or at least, that was what Okina said.

"I believe there is some element of truth to that story, that I do." She would have expected Himura to be watching Megumi, but his eyes were on Sano. As if Sano was the one they needed to be worried about now.

"Tch. Whether she's some kidnapped med student or not, she's mixed up with Takeda and being targeted by the Oniwabanshuu."

Sano pushed himself away from the wall.

Kaoru looked to Himura. They all looked to Himura, except Sano, who was looking at Megumi. He jabbed his finger in her direction.

"And I want to know why Takeda would have some med student working for him. What did he want you to do?"

"I ran a clinic for his thugs, of course." She lifted her chin. "Fairly basic first aid."

"Bullshit. Nano-inoculating a kid and using it to cure habu poisoning, on the fly, is not basic first aid."

He was right. And Takeda Kanryuu wasn't the type to care if his dumb muscle got hurt. Even if he did, he wouldn't send the Oniwabanshuu — the best of the best — to get the doctor back. He'd just blackmail a new one. So what was Megumi really doing for him?

"Megumi-dono will tell us when she is ready, she will."

"She'd better be ready soon, Kenshin. This is getting too dumb, even for me." Sano slid the door to the engawa open again and stepped through.

Misao stood in a rush, reaching for her knives out of habit. "Wait! Where are you going?"

"Gensai's clinic," came the reply from beyond the door, and then the darkness of the unlit courtyard by the time she reached the engawa. "You know, a doctor we can trust."

* * *

><p>For once, Aoshi entered Takeda's office through the door. He locked the door behind him, half out of caution and half to give Takeda a moment to cut off the ever-playing holovid.<p>

But Takeda didn't bother, and the accented crooning continued. From the flimsy spread over his desk, he was balancing accounts, or maybe balancing what his accountants told him with his own raw data. Most likely he was attempting to reconcile the two; Aoshi spent a vain moment hoping Takeda didn't give up and decide the correct response was to shoot his accountants and have his hired elites clean up the mess.

It wasn't really a question of whether the accountants would die. It was a question of whether they would die before his contract dissolved.

Takeda looked up for an instant, then went back to his numbers. "You failed to break her, failed to keep her here, and now you've failed to bring her back."

"A temporary delay," he said, as if Takeda's censure had any effect on him.

"Are you at least going to punish them?"

"Oniwabanshuu matters are _my_ concern."

Takeda looked up from his accounts. His eyes narrowed for a moment, and then he looked back down. "Do you have a plan to get her back?"

"Several."

"I suppose that's a start. You know, I'd begun to wonder what I pay you for."

Aoshi didn't bother with a reply. Why waste the effort on this employer? If he was _lucky_, every word would go in one ear and out the other.

The silence between them continued until Takeda gestured with his stylus, minimizing all open windows and muting his recording. He looked up again, this time fixing Aoshi with a stare that might have been piercing.

"You're not going to tell me any of those plans?"

"No."

"And why not?" Takeda raised an eyebrow, as if he didn't understand perfectly well.

"Oniwabanshuu matters are my concern."

Takeda's eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "You could stand to be a bit more cooperative, you know."

"The point stands."

"So it does! Now, tell me: if Megumi came back on her own, would those dojo people try to steal her back?"

"That depends on circumstances."

Takeda paused for a moment to mull over whatever idea he had in his head. Aoshi waited.

"What if I spoke to her, and convinced her to come back? Personal leverage, and all that."

"If they didn't know she was returning here, they would have little reason to seek her out."

Takeda smiled. "Then I think I have our plan."

"Understood. The Oniwabanshuu will arrange contact."

Aoshi moved toward the window, readying himself to locate his men and reassign them. There had to be a way to contact Takani without alarming the Kamiya dojo. The problem lay in attracting Takani's attention and overcoming her caution while simultaneously maintaining a low profile.

"Oh, and Aoshi?"

He turned toward Takeda, away from the window.

"If you hate me so much, why are you my whore?"

* * *

><p>Aoshi sealed the Oniwabanshuu quarters, locking out Takeda himself and any of his emissaries. He pressed the keys harder than strictly necessary, but applying force to something Takeda owned felt... good. Better than he'd felt when he shut Takeda's office window behind him.<p>

"Okashira?"

"Hannya. Our client wishes to establish one-on-one contact with Takani."

If Hannya sensed his anger, he declined to mention. But he stood, bowed, and murmured, "I will make the arrangements, Aoshi-sama."

And then he was gone. For him to flee so quickly meant he _had_ noticed Aoshi's ire. And thought Aoshi might direct it at him.

"Beshimi," Aoshi said.

The little reptite waved his uninjured arm and forced himself to sit up. "My humblest apologies, Aoshi-sama. I know I failed you."

"Yes." He said nothing more.

His agent had been far outclassed. If the swordsmen in that dojo could bring down Hyottoko and Hannya, then Beshimi would never have stood a chance.

Frankly, he was lucky Kamiya's red-headed visitor hadn't _killed_ any of his agents outright. Death by a simple sword might be temporary, but resurrection could be an expensive process. And far worse now, without Takani to ply her nanite formulas.

His silence drilled in the extent of Beshimi's failure. He let it continue until Beshimi lowered his head, eyes drifting closed.

"Your actions have injured another operative." He paused, allowed his eyes to narrow behind his glasses. "Do not fail again."

"I won't, Aoshi-sama."

He nodded. And then he turned away. Hyottoko was in intensive care for severe burns. Not to mention blood poisoning from unlit napalm making its way into the open mouth-wound.

He had much to do, and was down half his team.

* * *

><p>At precisely six the next morning, Aoshi unlocked the doors to Takeda's bedroom with a few swipes of his thumb. He left them hissing open and closed behind him.<p>

"Wake up."

Takeda did. Instantly. To his credit, he was silent as he brought the laser pistol to bear. No teeth chattering, no pleas, just a simple act of preparation.

"You wished to speak to Takani. You may do so now."

Takeda didn't reply until he'd dressed with shaking hands. "This couldn't have waited an hour?"

"No."

They said nothing more to each other until Aoshi opened the doors to Takeda's office. He swept pieces of flimsy out of his way, accessing the desk's keyboard. There, after a few more command strings — connecting to a proxy router via another proxy router and encrypting the connection — Aoshi entered the contact number Hannya had given him.

He had to repeat the connection process twice before Takani finally picked up.

"Who is this?"

She had whispered the words. Aoshi could almost imagine her cradling the receiver between cheek and shoulder as she sank to her knees. Perhaps she was trying to hide herself from view in some out-of-the-way part of the house.

Takeda laughed. He threw his arms open wide, expansively. "Why, Megumi! Don't you remember your host?"

"Kanryuu," Takani hissed.

A small icon began to blink on Takeda's holo-screen. Aoshi tapped it, then watched as a blueprint of the dojo — the Kamiya household — appeared onscreen. Security cameras activated and began to broadcast, view flickering from one room to the next. Kamiya, asleep, with her sword not far from her hand. Myoujin, sleeping on his back and surrounded by monitors. Sagara, sprawled on the floor in a tea room and idly toying with a bandage. Himura, who woke and stared at the camera a moment, then went back to sleep.

"Haven't you missed me, my dear?"

"No," said Takani, and there was no sound of running water in the background, so which woman with long dark hair was in the shower?

The camera routine finally cycled on the kitchen. Takani had taken the call in there. Aoshi tapped the key sequence that would finalize the broadcast.

"_Such_ a shame," said Takani. "Because I've missed you."

"I'm not coming back."

"Brave of you," Takeda said. He clucked a few times. "Poor, brave, silly girl. What does that world hold for you?"

On the screen, Takani reached for a kitchen knife. "What are you talking about?"

"You seem to think you're in a whole new world now. You haven't left mine yet."

"I have," she whispered. Aoshi watched her fingers tighten on the knife and then let his gaze flicker to Takeda.

Takeda curved his lips downward into an exaggerated pout. "Do you really think you can get clean of what you did? Who would you even run to, hm?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." But she did, or thought she did; she wouldn't have stiffened her spine and inclined her head, otherwise.

"Your family _heal_ people. They wouldn't have you. No one with any decency at all would shelter you, Megumi. How many people have your drugs killed? And how many of the rest ruined themselves?"

"No, you're twisting the truth—I won't let you—"

"Hundreds? Thousands? How many of those could have lived, if you'd only had the courage to die? And how many more will die when the rest of the underworld finds out what you can make for them?"

The knife slipped from nerveless fingers. "Th-that's not true! You're wrong, completely wrong!"

"No, dear. I'm right. You just don't want to admit it."

Takani clenched her fists, knuckles whitening. She collapsed, bending over the counter with shoulders shaking.

"Hurry home, Megumi. Mine are the only open arms you'll ever see again."

Takeda reached out and closed the connection himself. He smiled up at Aoshi.

"I think that went quite well, don't you?"

Aoshi looked to the desk, the open line notification. The camera had begun its cycle again: Kamiya, Myoujin, Himura, Sagara, the woman in the shower — she'd stepped out and was wringing her hair dry — and then Takani, who was still sobbing in the kitchen. Sobbing quietly, now.

"Yes," he said. "She should return shortly."

"Put one of your men on look-out, then. I'm going back to sleep." Takeda's eyes narrowed. "Don't wake me unless I oversleep my nine o'clock holo-conference."

"Understood," Aoshi said, and looked back to the screen for a moment. Hannya cut the camera feed; the glimpse into the Kamiya household evaporated into snow, and then NO SIGNAL.


End file.
